


Reset to Zero

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Timelines, Friendship, Gen, Gen Fic, M/M, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:22:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sulu dies in a wasteful, preventable skirmish. Chekov decides that he's only got the rest of his life to make it right again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reset to Zero

**Author's Note:**

> Written for honeyycomb at happy_trekmas on LJ! I had a great deal of fun with this, especially as it is the soul-sibling (gone in a totally different direction) to another story I have in the works. It was directly inspired by the DS9 episode "The Visitor", though with some obvious changes, and the plot idea was graciously gifted to me by 6street.

_2262_

“Mr. Chekov.”

Chekov’s head snapped up from the floor and he stood at attention immediately, hands pressed tightly to his sides when he recognized Spock’s voice first as his commander, and then belatedly as his elder counterpart from the other reality. Even as Spock smiled with something like warm amusement, Chekov loosened his stance and forced himself to avoid adopting his pensive stare into nothingness once more.

“Ambassador Spock,” he said quietly. From the corner of his eye, he could see the flag-draped pod that contained what remained of Lieutenant Sulu, no doubt sterilized and left appearing much more peaceful than he had when streaked with blood on the planet’s surface. Soon enough, just as he had feared, the object was like a gravity well in the center of the room, and his gaze was dragged back toward it.

The ambassador had doubtlessly come aboard solely for this occasion, to see off a friend who wasn’t a friend. Not really. Not in this life. He was somewhat more wrinkled than before, but as sharp-minded as Chekov remembered him to be from their brief interactions. Chekov had been in the uniformed party to greet him when he came for the service, along with the ambassador’s younger counterpart, the captain, and Lieutenant Uhura, and had been impressed by the gentle tact the man displayed for each of them, as if he understood something about their relationships with one another that they had hardly come to know themselves. His eyes had settled on Chekov disconcertingly when he murmured his apologies, and Chekov had been desperate to know what that look meant since; if the version of himself that the ambassador had known (in another time, another place, another life) had shared the same sense of delicate urgency whenever he was around Sulu.

“Captain Kirk says you haven’t left the room since visitation hours began this morning,” he observed neutrally.

Chekov stiffened in response. “I understand that it is regulation to post an officer on guard for the dead. Sulu was my...” His voice dipped below an audible range, choked, and then returned. “Sulu was my best friend.”

“I see.” Ambassador Spock folded his hands behind his back and looked thoughtfully out the porthole.

The _Enterprise_ was in high orbit around a planet in the Centauri system that glowed green from the algae in its plentiful oceans. Sulu had liked it very much when they had first visited, had been fascinated by the merpeople who inhabited those oceans and had kept a flowering species from the planet in his quarters, glowing from the aquarium between his console and the single porthole that looked out into deep space. Chekov’s chest contracted painfully at the memory and he wondered what had become of the algae, the aquarium, Gertrude the snapping plant on Sulu’s bedside table, or the heap of fencing gear in the far corner by the bathroom.

“In my time,” Ambassador Spock began carefully, as if he could sense Chekov’s thoughts without the tactile stimulus necessary for other Vulcans. “You were very, very good friends with the Lieutenant, for many years after you were neither lieutenants.”

“This didn’t happen in your timeline.” Chekov had known that, but he didn’t know what else to say just then, so he allowed the words to blurt from his mouth.

The ambassador was typically ambivalent of speaking too freely about his reality, the things he had left behind when he had been trapped here, but this time he didn’t seem to hesitate because of that. He searched Chekov’s face when Chekov could force himself to look up at him again, and then he shook his head very slightly from side to side exactly once.

“No,” he said simply. “Many things that have happened here did not happen in my timeline. The timeline has diverged to such a point that only a few things that the... ah, the fabric of the universe is reliant on to some degree, only those things remain constant.”

“The ship,” Chekov concluded, not for the first time. “And this crew.”

“Somehow, yes,” the ambassador agreed and appeared to be astonished, even embarrassed by the very idea. “This, Lieutenant Sulu’s death, this is not constant. It is simply a result of divergent occurrences.”

Chekov looked away, unsurprised that the confirmation of all he already knew was no comfort to him. He had thought momentarily that perhaps that knowing his other self had spent a life of accomplishment and success and friendship with Sulu would ease this feeling.

“I would like to offer my most sincere condolences for the loss of your friend and shipmate.”

Chekov nodded to indicate that he had heard him, and gave him no other response. Ambassador Spock seemed to regard him one last time with regretful sadness, and then left him alone in his silence.

If they were all bound by some kind of unfamiliar destiny, some ties from another life—the very thing that had brought them all to one place at once, then there was a way to return to that. The universe had bent itself once to heal one of those divergences. If that was true, then there was a way to restore this to something more like what the Ambassador had known in his life. There _was_ a way, and Chekov was going to find it.

 

_2269_

A spray of sparks was the first thing Chekov saw when he came to again, before his eyes focused on the juncture of two metal plates on the ceiling and realized that he was lying flat on the floor. His body felt scorched and his muscles were aching, but the fresh pain of someone’s hands on his shoulders was what brought him around the rest of the way.

“Commander Chekov! Sir!”

“Report,” he managed in a thick, distracted voice, and reached up to his forehead. It was sticky with blood, but Lieutenant Suleri brushed his hand away and he heard her pass an emergency medical tricorder over him. Her face swam into focus, her dark hair pulled tight around her head, her eyes shadowed with concern. Suleri had accepted a transfer to the same research post that Chekov had, and the combination of her research experience and interests had led her to work as his assistant in these particular studies.

She sat back on her heels when she seemed satisfied with the tricorder’s results. “Our simulations appear to be incomplete, sir.”

Chekov pushed himself up through the warning scream of pain in his limbs. Lieutenant Suleri pushed him back down to the ground and looked at him sternly.

“The temporal energy is too unstable in this environment,” she explained and tapped a few things into the tricorder, sweeping it over him again. Chekov brushed a trickle of blood from his forehead and forced himself to his feet, to review the readings from the console that hadn’t blown out in the resulting explosion from their most recent lab test.

In the years since Sulu’s death, Chekov had gone far from his first posting on the _Enterprise._ He’d been offered the chief of security position on the _Enterprise_ for the second mission under Kirk’s command, and this particular posting: a research position with on a fast track to promotion that would permit him to continue the temporal studies he’d been conducting in the labs on the _Enterprise_. Chekov had taken this position without even a second thought to the contrary. There were times of doubt, of course, when he thought that this was a futile endeavor he was wasting his life on. And then...

And then he would remember Sulu’s smile across the helm, the touch of his hands, the promise of something greater than a lifetime of searching for a way of bringing him back, some great friendship that had withstood worse things than death. The universe had twisted itself to bring them together twice. A third time was no great feat.

“Computer, display readings from the most recent laboratory test of simulation zeta-nine. Authorization Lieutenant Commander Chekov-delta-tango-three.” When he confirmed what Lieutenant Suleri had already told him, Chekov pushed himself away from the console. “Set up the other computer to test a few other simulations. Broaden the programming for possible variables in environment. I want—”

“You should rest before we resume, sir,” she said, and then frowned at her own insolence. “If you don’t mind my saying.”

His eyes swept over her and he bit back his inclination to chastise her for her concern. Chekov hadn’t had someone to look after him for years, not since Kirk had lay off the paternalistic care sometime in the months after Sulu’s death. Perhaps even before that. Instead, he dropped his eyes to the console again and shook his head.

“This is more important,” he insisted firmly, and continued scanning the data until his eyes were blurring from exhaustion, the creeping pain from the explosion. The Lieutenant put her hand on his bicep and squeezed carefully.

“Sir,” she repeated and drew him away from the console. It didn’t matter anyway. The numbers only confirmed what he had feared. It had failed; everything he had been building toward for the past five years was for nothing, utterly worthless.

“Shut it down,” Chekov said wearily and allowed her to guide him to a nearby chair. In time, a few moments or a few days, he would begin to look for another way forward. Five years of research and work couldn’t be for nothing, not if he had a goal in mind. Five years didn’t matter to a life he could save, this one life of all of the ones he’d failed before.

She looked at him curiously, but she obeyed quickly, dragging her fingertips across the screen until the console was dark. “What should we do now?” she asked softly, sitting in the chair next to his. She was new to this particular project, but she looked as devastated as Chekov felt.

He looked up at her and found he couldn’t force his lips upward into a smile, leaving his expression little more than a grimace acknowledging the insurmountable quantity of work that waited for them.

“I will see you in the morning, Lieutenant,” he said disquietly and stood up. His muscles were sore from exhaustion and the newer aches from the accident, but that was nothing compared to a dead man waiting for him to find the solution. If it worked, it wasn’t as if he’d remember any of this anyway. “We will restart our work then.”

 

_2274_

Kirk looked at ease with himself when he circled the table in the center of Chekov’s new office aboard the _Enterprise._ “I’ve congratulated you on the promotion, haven’t I, Commander?”

“You have. More than once, sir.” Chekov smiled wearily. It had been a few long days after his promotion to commander and the transfer to the _Enterprise._ Kirk had requested him specifically, which Chekov had been grateful for, but he wondered if Kirk was planning to explain the choice. After eight years on the research station, he had returned to command, serving as navigational and tactical officer for another captain until then, when Kirk had requested him after his last executive officer had left for a command of her own.

“You can call me Jim, Pavel,” Kirk offered, his footsteps halting in front of the old aquarium. Chekov had studied Sulu’s algae carefully so he would know how to care for it, and it had rewarded him with an annual, luminescent bloom on the surface of the water for the past decade that made his office smell like the clean, sweet-scented sea of that planet Sulu had taken the algae samples from.

“Jim,” Chekov echoed, trying the sound out. Then he smiled, “Maybe I’ll call you that off-duty.”

Kirk didn’t respond or look away from the pulsating glow of the aquarium, not for a long time, but his expression was strangely pensive. “Off-duty,” he said and finally looked away from it. “That’s a fine idea, Pavel. In fact, we’re off-duty now.”

Chekov gestured fruitlessly toward the aquarium. “Is something the matter, sir? Ah, Jim.”

“This was Sulu’s, wasn’t it?” Kirk turned away from the aquarium, from the porthole it was set up in front of. “From that planet with the merpeople, right?”

“That’s right,” Chekov confirmed stiffly. He hadn’t told anyone about the reason for his temporal studies—it was in direct violation with the Temporal Prime Directive to go back and change anything about the timeline as it was. He had held his silence about that, but he had always thought that Kirk had his suspicions on Chekov’s motivations, and rightfully so.

“That was a long time ago,” Kirk said slowly, resuming his circuit around the room and stopping in front of Chekov. His eyes were bright and intense, as if he was scanning Chekov, but when he continued, it was in a light tone that suggested he was changing the subject. “I was glad to hear that you gave up that research and went back to the Command track. I knew you were going to make a good XO for me one day. You’ll be a great captain.”

“I haven’t given it up, sir,” Chekov said, thinking of the vast amount of research he had brought with him, the simulations he planned to run on the _Enterprise_ ’s computers in just a few days when he had settled in.

“Pavel,” Kirk sighed and waved him to sit down with him on the couch near the windows.

Chekov sat and faced the aquarium.

“We’re off-duty, so this is all going off the record,” Kirk explained and folded his hands on his knees. “I want you to think really seriously about what you’re doing here, about whether you’re obsessing about something you had no control over.”

“Sir—Jim,” Chekov corrected himself quickly, stumbling over the unfamiliar name. “I attended counseling at the time—when it happened. I understand all of that.”

“Then consider that you’re planning to unravel a lot of good that’s happened in the last twelve years since Lieutenant Sulu died.” It was the closest Chekov knew Kirk would allow himself to insinuate. His meaning was clear all the same. He stood up and patted his shoulder, pausing long enough to allow Chekov to stare flatly at the aquarium as he spoke again.

“There’s a lot you haven’t accomplished yet, Pavel,” Kirk said warmly, his hand squeezing Chekov’s shoulder in camaraderie. “A lot of things you deserve to accomplish before you throw it away.”

Chekov didn’t say anything at first and Kirk didn’t release him until he did.

“Yes, sir,” he said quietly, and the weight of Kirk’s hand lifted from his shoulder immediately. Behind him, Chekov heard the door open and swish shut, and knew he was alone again.

 

_2286_

There was a datapadd on the very corner of his desk, but Chekov hadn’t so much as picked it up yet. Instead, he’d gone to the porthole view from his ready room and looked out at the emptiness of space as soon as Commander Suleri departed after leaving the datapadd and a hushed whisper of explanation.

Twelve years had gone since Chekov had so much as allowed himself to open the files containing his now antiquated research on harnessing temporal fluctuations. Twelve very long, very productive years, in which he’d commanded his ship through war, half a dozen peace treaties, and countless important discoveries in the universe around them. He had conducted the First Contact procedures for no fewer than four new races. It had been a successful career by any metric.

And there, on his desk, was the breakthrough he had spent twelve years of his life looking for. Easy as that. If he wanted, Chekov could take it all back and fix what he’d started and begin again. He had done it all, received his own ship to captain on his own, and had succeeded at it. It hadn’t been easy, but it was possible for him. It could be possible again.

He tore himself from the window and walked toward his desk, picking up the datapadd in a single motion. He had the opportunity if he chose to pursue it.

Chekov leaned over his console and opened a commlink to his first officer. “Commander Suleri,” he said evenly and waited for her answer, which came after a beat of silence.

“Yes, Captain?” Her tone made it clear that she knew already what his choice would be, that she understood that he would not have contacted her if he hadn’t already made his choice. “Should I come up there, sir?”

He paused, and then lowered his head toward the console, his eyes closed tightly just before he made the choice, as if there had ever been a question of what the outcome would be. “Yes, thank you.”

 

_2300_

It was 2356 station time when Chekov looked up at the clock, four minutes to the new century. He lowered his hands onto the console and looked out the window into the deep of space. Earlier in the evening, he had been planning to work all through the night until he made headway on his last series of failed tests. He knew he was on the verge of something, but overcoming the last of these obstacles, he knew, could take years.

There was a new aquarium set up in the corner of his laboratory with a new sample of the same algae from the Centaurian ocean planet. Chekov admired the layer of nearly transparent flowers that gave a faint aura of light around them. The room smelled sweet. Chekov closed his eyes.

Sulu had waded into the ocean up to his waist near the planet’s dusk to get a sample of the curious flowers being knocked around by the tides. He had been laughing and unconcerned with the waves lapping at his chest which threatened at any time to knock him over. Chekov had warned him from the beach, but even as he was shouting over the crashing roar of the waves, he had been smiling himself while tearing his boots off. It happened just as he had pulled off his gold over-shirt and tossed it over his boots on the pink sand (a sodium compound, he recalled thinking to himself before taking that first step into the surf, the color enhanced by memory and the dimming light of day). It was just _then_ that he saw the first of the meraliens, first a hand tinted bluish, then what could have only been something like a dorsal fin. Chekov had stood up to his knees in the alien ocean with his mouth open to point it out to Sulu, but neither of them said another word for a very, very long moment. The wind carrying the sound of the waves had smelled very sweet. In the distance, the ocean was glowing with the bloom of a million of the same little flowers that had drifted to the shore.

Finally, Chekov opened his eyes again and the memory dissipated. That had been forty years before, he realized with a pained jolt, but for only a moment it had seemed as real as if it had happened the moment before. Chekov had been so terribly, painfully young, though he might have punched anyone who reminded him of it, and Sulu had been his best friend for a mere four years. How far did that go, he wondered in vain, and looked up at the window. Did it go ten-fold past the time he had known him? Did it go forever?

At the time, when he had finished speaking with Ambassador Spock, it had all seemed so important that he bring Sulu back. He had the means—much more so forty years later—and the very nature of the research made it so he had nearly infinite time to set things right, no matter how old he grew. With age he had begun to understand the imperative nature of Kirk’s request that he let go, but he hadn’t allowed himself to look back to see how foolish he was being. All Chekov had ever wanted was a different life than this one, a life like the one the Ambassador had told him about standing over Sulu’s body, where they had been friends. He might have even been simply satisfied to have had the chance to know what they might have been in this life.

It was selfish when dozens of officers had died under his command, following his orders to the end the way Sulu had done for Kirk. He could name all of them, he thought, the way Kirk had been able to. What made Sulu special among them?

Chekov answered himself aloud with a laugh, “That you could save all of them by doing this.” It was so childish, and yet he had come so far for so long that to give it up just then would have been a waste.

“Computer,” he said absently. The computer chirped at him in its inimitable way. “Stardate and station time.”

“It is 2300.00. Station time 0001.”

Chekov paused and smiled wearily, rubbing his face and returning to his console. “Computer, run test six-theta-chi again.” The computer chirped again and went silent.

He had come this far. What was a little farther to save a friend if it meant he could save himself, too?

 

_2314_

Only after running the same simulation for the fourth time did Chekov begin to believe that it was possible that he had found the right one. After the ninth trial, he was convinced, and proceeded through another rigorous set of tests that lasted into the early morning hours. After half a century of searching, the answer was waiting for him all along. His study of temporal energy waves at the quantum level had revolutionized the study of time along the way, and the idea had come to him in a dream after presenting at a conference on Cardassia Prime.

And there it was: evidence of temporal fluctuations across the fabric of the universe itself that could be harnessed, transformed into a gateway to the very specific point in time that Chekov needed to change everything.

After sitting back in his chair, Chekov smiled into his hand and stared at the screen with an expression of open fondness. All these years, all of it worth it. It wasn’t much farther at all. He could isolate the waves around the planet Sulu had died on, determine when the optimal one would occur, and it was only a few experiments with the temporal energy waves could determine the best way to navigate them. It was all there, within reach, worthwhile at least for that particular moment of triumph.

He looked over to his aquarium, which seemed to pulsate at him in reaction to his mood. “Soon,” he told it, and then recalled that it was only a plant, not even one quite like Gertrude, and shook his head, standing up and switching off his console. There was a great deal more work to do, but for once, Chekov felt that he truly had all the time in the world.

 

_2318_

“Admiral Chekov,” Suleri said as she stepped onto the bridge of his ship, her hair sprinkled with gray, where his had faded years before without ever going white. Her eyes and mouth were wrinkled at the corners, and he had not ever been so glad to see her as then.

“Admiral Suleri,” Chekov smiled and moved his hands from the console he had been working at. His voice was even and clear, without the heavy stumbling over some of his consonants as he had done when he had been very young. “I’m very glad you could make it.”

Her grin was a little playful and she stood next to him, looking down at the data on the console. “As if I’d miss the crowning achievement of your career, Pavel,” she said and allowed her eyes to flicker over the results of their pre-tests. She made a few changes, checking her datapadd for reference from time to time, and then stood up at attention. “We’re ready, sir.”

“At ease, Fatema,” he said with a scowl, which she only laughed at, but she did relax her stance. “We’re the same rank, give or take some seniority.”

The rest of the bridge crew worked, seemingly oblivious to their conversation, but Chekov stood next to her while the helm announced that they were arriving at the pre-determined coordinates. The planet appeared round and bright on the viewscreen and Chekov stared at it with a small frown. Everything had started here, when Sulu had died all those years before.

“Pavel?” Suleri’s hand was cool on his shoulder, and he pulled himself out of his thoughts so he could turn to look at her concerned face. Her eyes searched his and finally softened into an easy, friendly expression, even when her hand didn’t move away from his shoulder. “I always wondered why,” she said meaningfully.

He couldn’t pretend to misunderstand. No one knew his research better than she did, and even if any of the other crew had studied his results and guessed some of the applications for the tests they were running; only Suleri had been there all along to see his single-minded devotion. Hardly for the first time, Chekov wondered if this was all worth it, trading one life for the potential of another.

“His name was Hikaru Sulu,” Pavel said and looked away from her face; back out to the planet on the viewscreen. “He was my friend, and he died on that planet.”

Suleri didn’t look at all surprised, but she nodded to the science officer waiting for their command. “What’s the status of our anomaly?”

“We’re reading an increased neutrino surge, as predicted, growing toward our optimum limit. The graviton beam is prepared to generate the anomaly automatically.”

“Very good. Stand by,” she said and slipped her hand down Chekov’s arm so she could take his hand into hers, lowering her voice and retaining some hint of teasing. “Just a friend, Pavel?”

Chekov looked at her in wide-eyed alarm and laughed immediately. “Just a friend,” he assured her quickly and squeezed her slight hand in his. “I never found out anything more than that.”

Suleri smiled a little more, the edges of her mouth ticking upward, and kept her eyes on the viewscreen. “I remember Lieutenant Sulu,” she said distantly, as if she was thinking back a very long time. Then she looked up at Pavel and smiled. “You were thick as thieves then.”

“Maybe we will be again,” he said and set his jaw grimly. As the anomaly opened, the successful culmination of all his life’s efforts, Chekov found himself wondering if it had all been worth it in the end. There was no way to tell, it wasn’t as if he would remember fifty years of searching for an answer. There was no way to compare one life that might have been to yet another. There were opportunities here that he had lost pursuing this single-mindedly. There were opportunities there that he’d never known in this life.

Suleri removed her hand from his and approached the helm, giving the orders that were sitting unspoken on Chekov’s tongue. He admired her, the curving helm of his ship, his anomaly, his coming death and rebirth; the return to another possible life.

_Don’t waste it this time, Pavel,_ he instructed himself silently, tucked his hands behind his back, and approached the helm.

“Enter the anomaly,” he ordered, attracting the stares from every officer on the bridge, who had somehow failed to see that this was what he had intended all along. No one moved at first, except Suleri, who leaned forward and tapped the command into the pilot’s console.

Chekov’s vision shook, but he remained firmly rooted in place while the ship groaned and shifted around them. Suleri grabbed his shoulder and shouted something at him, but her words sounded distorted and far-away. The ship gave another tremble and a quaking roar filled his ears.

Then there was nothing at all.

 

_2262_

Chekov looked across the transporter pad and smiled at Sulu when they rematerialized back on the ship. The trip down to the planet had been eventful, but everything had gone well after a temporary misunderstanding about the phasers the officers were wearing had been cleared up. For a while, it had looked tense, even dangerous.

When they had the all clear from Kyle behind the transporter console, Chekov stepped off the console and smiled at him.

“Chekov.” Sulu’s voice was clear but deliberately quiet as he came up behind him with a smile. “Don’t run off just yet. You’ve got a day off tomorrow?”

He couldn’t help but smile immediately, even as he nodded, light-headed with excitement. Ensign Suleri, a young science officer fresh from the academy, waved to him as she left. Chekov returned the wave with a smile and a strange sensation of familiarity.

“I never work a shift on Thursday,” he said very carefully, his speech deliberate and measured when he spoke Standard, even if their translation chips would have taken care of any language barriers. Chekov didn’t want anything he said to be interpreted any way other than the way he meant it.

Sulu grinned broadly and walked with him out into the corridor, leading their way toward the part of the ship Chekov knew his quarters were in. “Neither do I,” he said, though Chekov already knew that from the occasional check on the duty roster.

Before Chekov realized, they were standing in front of Sulu’s quarters, and he was smiling with invitation, gesturing inside to his quarters. Chekov nodded and went ahead of him, pausing a few steps inside the room to look around. Something like the feeling back in the transporter room was nagging him, as if things should have been different about the room, but nothing was changed from anything he could remember. There was the usual stack of fencing gear by the closet, Gertrude by the bed, lifting her blossom and swiveling it toward Sulu, and a large aquarium glowing with Sulu’s beloved algae from that planet with the pink beaches in the Centauri system.

“Anything wrong?” Sulu asked, coming up beside him with his hands clasped behind his back, examining the room with that faintly amused smile on his face.

“No,” Chekov said quickly and looked over at him before his face relaxed into an easy smile. The feeling had all but disappeared entirely, forgotten as easily as it had come on. He shook his head cheerfully. “No, everything’s fine.”


End file.
